Charged particle beam devices have many functions in a plurality of industrial fields, including, but not limited to, electron beam inspection (EBI), critical dimension (CD) measurements of semiconductor devices during manufacturing, defect review (DR) of semiconductor devices during manufacturing, exposure systems for lithography, detecting devices and testing systems. Thus, there is a high demand for structuring, testing and inspecting specimens within the micrometer and nanometer scale. Micrometer and nanometer scale process control, inspection or structuring can be done with charged particle beams, e.g. electron beams, which are generated and focused in charged particle beam devices, such as electron microscopes. Charged particle beams offer superior spatial resolution compared to, for example, photon beams due to the short wavelengths.
High throughput electron beam inspection (EBI) systems can utilize multi-beam charged particle beam devices, such as electron microscopes, that are able to create, focus and scan multiple primary charged particle beams inside a single column of the charged particle beam device. A sample can be scanned by an array of focused primary charged particle beams or beamlets, which in turn create multiple signal charged particle beams. The individual signal charged particle beams can be mapped onto detection elements.
The throughput of single beam electron inspection at high resolution is reaching a limit. A solution can be provided by multiple electron beams. Generally, there are different approaches, namely providing multiple single-beam columns, a single column having multiple charged particle beamlets, or multiple columns with multiple charged particle beamlets.
Charged particle inspection systems tend to charge non-conductive areas on the sample or specimen. Charging of non-conductive areas may cause image degradation of the imaging characteristics for the surrounding conductive areas. Furthermore, sensitive areas may be damaged by electron beam irradiation.
In view of the above, improved charged particle beam devices and improved methods for operating a charged particle beam device that overcome at least some of the problems in the art are beneficial.